lazing with death.

Thomas stood all day, while the Southern masses, flushed by victory
everywhere else, pressed harder. Terrible reports of defeat and
destruction came to him continually, but he did not flinch. He turned
the same calm face to everything, and said to the generals that whatever
happened they would keep their own front unbroken.

The day closed with the men of Thomas still grim and defiant. The dead
lay in heaps along their front, but as the darkness settled down on the
unfinished battle they meant to fight with equal valor and tenacity on
the morrow. The first day had favored the South, had favored it largely,
but on the Union left hope still flamed high.

Darkness swept over the sanguinary field. A cold wind of autumn blew off
the hills and mountains, and the men shivered as they lay on the ground,
but Thomas allowed no fires to be lighted. Food was brought in the
darkness, and those who could find them wrapped themselves in blankets.
Between the two armies lay the hecatombs of dead and the thousands of
wounded.

Dick, his comrades and the rest of the regiment sat together in a
little open space behind a thicket. It was to be their position for
the fighting next day. Thomas, passing by, had merely given them an
approving look, and then had gone on to re-form his lines elsewhere.
Dick knew that all through the night he would be conferring with his
commander, Rosecrans, McCook and the others, and he knew, too, that
many of the Union soldiers would be at work, fortifying, throwing up
earthworks, and cutting down trees for abattis. He heard already the
ring of the axes.

But the Winchester men rested for the present. Nature had made their own
position strong with a low hill, and a thicket in front. They lay upon
the ground, sheltering themselves from the cold wind, which cut through
bodies relaxed and almost bloodless after such vast physical exertions
and excitement so tremendous.

CHAPTER XIV. THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA

Dick, after eating the cold food which was served to him, sank into a
state which was neither sleep nor stupor. It was a mystic region between
the conscious and the unconscious, in which all things were out of
proportion, and some abnormal.

He saw before him a vast stretch of dead blackness which he knew
nevertheless was peopled by armed hosts ready to spring upon them at
dawn. The darkness and silence were more oppressive than sound and
light, even made by foes, would hav